Communication networks are widely used to provide communication between different computer systems and other electronic devices. Internet protocol (IP) packets can be sent from a device to a single recipient on a network using unicast transmission, or to a group of recipients on a network using multicast transmission. Multicast-based devices use special address assignments for simultaneously broadcasting IP packets to a large audience of users. Filter rules are typically used at layer 3 of a network in the forwarding plane or data plane.